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Sky Implements NICE, Silver Lining Workforce Optimization Solution

By Carolyn J Dawson, TMCnet Contributor

Sky has entered into a strategic collaboration with NICE Systems (News - Alert), which will now assist Sky in further improving the customer experience and augmenting operational effectiveness for call centers.

Sky will implement a workforce optimization (WFO) solution, jointly developed by NICE and Silver Lining. The solution will assist Sky in supervising its multi-skilled workforce in an efficient manner, resulting in enhanced customer service. Sky will also be able to leverage the solution for ensuring optimal business outcomes, and decreasing expenses.

In a statement, Andy Webster, head, Contact Design and Service Delivery at Sky said, “We are confident that the combined offering from NICE and Silver Lining Solutions will help us extend our leadership in customer service.”

Sky operates one of the major contact centers in the U.K. The NICE solution will give Sky total visibility into real agent activity and skill gaps for a minimum of 7,500 employees that deal directly with customers. Sky can generate, administer and improve modified training schedules with the help of this performance data. Sky will now be able to guarantee that agents have access to information required during actual customer interactions in a rapid and simplified manner.

The latest solution incorporates several technologies. These include NICE IEX (News - Alert) Workforce Management, NICE Real-Time Activity Monitoring along with Silver Lining Solutions’ Optimizer and Planner. Estimating staffing requirements and scheduling of agents is possible with NICE IEX Workforce Management.

Visibility into employee desktop activities is offered by NICE Real-Time Activity Monitoring. Optimizer from Silver Lining Solutions emphasizes on skill gaps at an individual level, letting Sky develop personalized training plans for all employees. Planner from Silver Lining allows the computerized scheduling and management of these training plans for individual employees depending on performance.

Benny Einhorn, president, EMEA and chief marketing officer at NICE said, “We are pleased to play an important role in helping Sky achieve its business goals. While Sky has a rich and diverse product set, we were able to offer them a unified WFM and skills management strategic solution. The adoption of our solution by a major U.K. communications company strongly supports the value of our offering in providing scalable, multi-channel workforce optimization capabilities.”